(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale reportedly used funds from a federal Pell Grant to buy the guns she used to kill three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members in a March 27, 2023, mass shooting.
The bombshell news was first reported by Tennessee radio host Brian Wilson, who said that Hale “took money from an education grant she received to purchase her weapons and to pay for training at a local gun range.”
According to the Tennessee Star, Hale purchased seven guns, three of which were recovered from the Covenant School after she died.
“The three guns alone—each currently valued at $519, $849, and $578—would cost an estimated total $1,946,” the Star reported Friday. “The total estimated cost of the weapons and accessories on the list is $2,619.68.”
News of Hale receiving federal funds is the latest major development in the 14-month-old crime. More pages from Hale’s much-anticipated manifesto were also released this week, as Headline USA covered in this story.
Wilson and the Tennessee Star have also detailed Hale’s extensive mental illness, reporting Sunday that Hale’s psychiatrist failed to report the transgender killer’s murder fantasies to law enforcement—a legal and ethical violation.
“Sources familiar with the investigation confirm that search warrants were run on the home and office of the therapist in an effort to obtain notes of the therapy sessions with the Covenant School shooter,” Wilson reportedly said last Friday.
“One source says detectives have evidence that the shooter told the therapist about fantasies that involved, among other things, killing her parents and carrying out a school shooting of some kind.”
The psychologist, who hasn’t been named, reportedly closed her practice just 86 days prior to Hale’s attack.
Hale, a 28-year-old woman who was identifying as a man at the time of the mass shooting, gunned down three Christian children and three adults in March before being killed by law enforcement. In the subsequent investigation, officials discovered the manifesto in Hale’s apartment.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.